Self-mutilation

“ But, if we watch the influence upon the will itself, of its own wrong decisions, its own yielding to temptations, we shall discover that the voluntary faculty may be ruined from within; may be made impotent to good by its own action; may surrender itself with such an intensity and entireness to appetite, passion, and self-love, that it becomes unable to reverse itself, and overcome its own wrong disposition and direction. ”

“ Is he now to try and develope his ‘individuality,’ his self which is not the same as other selves? Where is it? What is it? Where can he find it? The soul within him is saturated, is filled, is qualified by, it has assimilated, has got its substance, has built itself up from, it is one and the same life with the universal life, and if he turns against this he turns against himself; if he thrusts it from him, he tears his own vitals; if he attacks it, he sets his weapon against his own heart. ”

“ Mutability to such a vision, is as the eddy that spirit maketh around its own self-circling agency, revealing alike in the smallest ripple and the mightiest surges the power that stirreth at the centre. ”

“ Not only may the mental states, etc., of one's self be changed or transmuted by Hermetic Methods; but also the states of others may be, and are, constantly transmuted in the same way, usually unconsciously, but often consciously by some understanding the laws and principles, in cases where the people affected are not informed of the principles of self-protection. ”

“ It becomes a magnet, a loadstone to draw you. Your constant habit of associating it in your mind with the past, creates around it an atmosphere which is a part of your being and welds you to it, so that you, the house, and the deed, become one mighty monster, inseparable. The idea that you can expiate the deed by this self-torture is vain. You can neither confer good upon yourself nor your victim. ”

“ Learn to limit yourself, to content yourself with some definite thing, and some definite work; dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not, and to believe in your own individuality. Self-distrust is destroying you; trust, surrender, abandon yourself; “believe and thou shalt be healed.” Unbelief is death, and depression and self-satire are alike unbelief. ”

“ Whether he had called it 'self-realisation' or any less ambiguous name, he would have come to the position that a man feels that he owes it to himself to strive for the best he knows, to 'do his duty for duty's sake,' that he must justify his thoughts and actions to himself—his unsophisticated self,—that, if not, he will feel remorse and guilt. ”

“ I cannot say I wished to kill myself. The power which drew me away from life was stronger, fuller, and more widespread than any mere wish. It was a force similar to the former striving to live, only in a contrary direction. All my strength drew me away from life. The thought of self-destruction now came to me as naturally as thoughts of how to improve my life had come formerly. ”

“ You can only develop it. You can only stick to your own very self, and never betray it. And by so sticking, you develop the one and only phoenix of your own self, and you unfold your own destiny, as a dandelion unfolds itself into a dandelion, and not into a stick of celery.
"Remember this, my boy: you've never got to deny the Holy Ghost which is inside you, your own soul's self. Never. Or you'll catch it. And you've never got to think you'll dodge the responsibility of your own soul's self, by loving or sacrificing or Nirvaning—or even anarchising and throwing bombs. You never will. ”

“ Moreover, do you imagine that if you set out to make the most of yourself in any position in which you are placed, that you will have no chance for self-sacrifice, and no opportunity of martyrdom offered you? ”

“ It would not, indeed, be an example of our substituting others for ourselves, but it would be an example of our substituting ourselves for others. And as it would not be an instance of benevolence, so neither would it be any instance of self-love; for this phantom of danger to ourselves, naturally rising to view upon sight of the distresses of others, would be no more an instance of love to ourselves, than the pain of hunger is. ”

“ If you take an essence which can change, it is not an essence at all; while, if you stand on anything more narrow, the self has disappeared. What is this essence of the self which never is altered? Infancy and old age, disease and madness, bring new features, while others are borne away. It is hard indeed to fix any limit to the self’s mutability. One self, doubtless, can suffer change in which another would perish. But, on the other hand, there comes a point in each where we should agree that the man is no longer himself. ”

“ Make acts of reparation for all the selfconceit of past life. When thoughts of self-conceit enter, let us shut the gates of our hearts against them, and make an act of profound humility and sorrow, seeing our own nothingness and baseness. We must seek for filial love by laying aside all confidence in self, and placing all our confidence in God alone; for all that proceeds from ourselves is corrupt, and our best actions have no merit unless performed solely for God's greater glory, without regard to ourselves."
"August 27, 1865.—Lay at the foot of the cross all secret doubts of God's guidance. ”

“ Deceit, then, whether it take the form of a fictitiously high estimation of oneself or the reverse, is the seed that produces an ill crop of Suffering. And we, if we would escape from Suffering and gain peace of mind, must rid ourselves of this self-deceit by all means in our power. It is above all things necessary that we possess an honest and up right heart. ”

“ The mutation that carried on the self-consciousness must have taken place in a degenerate species. That is why we have messed everything up. It is anybody's guess as to whether anyone can change the whole thing. ”

“ Usually nothing occurs to disillusion us about ourselves. But now and then fate, in unusually brutal ironic mood, forces us to see the real reason why we did this or that virtuous, self-sacrificing action, or blossomed forth in this or that nobility of character. Mildred was destined now to suffer one of these savage blows of disillusionment about self that thrust us down from the exalted moral heights where we have been preening into humble kinship with the weak and frail human race. ”

“ When a man passes from the dark stage of temptation to the more enlightened stage of transmutation, he has become a saint; namely, one who perceives the need of self-purification, who understands the way of self-purification, and who has entered that way and is engaged in perfecting himself. But there comes a time in the process of transmutation when, with the decrease of evil and the accumulation of good, there dawns in the mind a new vision, a new consciousness, a new man. ”

“ Bitter experience teaches that the imprisoning net clings too tightly to be stripped from our limbs by our own efforts. Nay rather, the net and the captive are one, and he who tries to cast off the oppression which hinders him from following that which is good is trying to cast off himself. The desperate problem that fronts every effort at self-emendation has two bristling impossibilities in it: one, how to annihilate the past; one, how to extirpate the evil that is part of my very self, and yet to keep the self entire. ”

“ You will say, you have much to struggle with in your own character, and that nothing can satisfy you while you have to contend with self so continually. But your greatest temptation is to dwell too much upon your internal trials, leading you almost insensibly to that most insidious and deceptive form of self-love, a too constant thought of self even in regard to one's faults. ”

“ He is not yet free from self, but still clings, though with less tenacity, to the love of personal existence, and to the idea of exclusive interest in his personal possessions. And when he at last realizes that those selfish elements must also be abandoned, there appears before him the third Gate—the Gateway of Surrender of Self. ”

“ Are they afraid to go to such extremes? Ah, why then go in that direction at all, if only by such extremes the desired result can be obtained? It is humiliating to degrade one's-self; but is it not still more humiliating to degrade one's-self in vain? ”

“ Self-preservation is the great law of nature; when a reptile hurts us, or an animal of prey threatens us, we think no further, but endeavour to annihilate it. When my life, or what may be essential to my life, requires the sacrifice of another,—or even if some passion, wholly unconquerable, requires it,—I should be a madman to hesitate. La Motte, I think I may confide in you—there are ways of doing certain things—you understand me? There are times, and circumstances, and opportunities—you comprehend my meaning? ”

“ Yet that of which we so earnestly desire the separation, the elimination, the death, is not less surely a part of psychological inheritance, of veritable Self, than are those younger and larger faculties which help to the realization of noble ideals. Rather than an end to be feared, the dissolution of Self is the one object of all objects to which our efforts should be turned. ”

“ The false self must die—nay, must "die daily," for the process is gradual, and there is no limit to it. It is a process of infinite expansion—of realising new correspondences, new sympathies and affinities with the not-ourselves, which affinities condition, and in conditioning constitute, our true life as persons. ”

“ And to pry one's self loose, to break or tear one's self away from such a mental view and condition as heredity and such years of rigorous restraint have developed, is no small task. Indeed, it often takes months, and sometimes years, wholly to rid one's self of these deep seated and powerful, wrong views and prejudices. ”

“ On the other hand, let soul inform and irradiate body as it may, the threads are utterly shorn asunder never: nor is man, the complete, the self-contained, permitted to cut himself wholly adrift from these his poor relations. The mute and stunted human embryo that gazes appealingly from out the depths of their eyes must ever remind him of a kinship once (possibly) closer. Nay, at times, it must even seem to whelm him in reproach. ”

“ The human eye never rests upon a sadder sight than a ruined soul, a mind shattered and debased by vice.
The Results of One Transgression.—The following case is a good illustration of the fact that a long course of transgression is not necessary to occasion the most serious results. A young man from an Eastern State who visited us for treatment was suffering with the usual consequences of self-abuse, but he asserted in the most emphatic manner that he had never committed the act of self-pollution but once in his life. ”

“ There are two extremes, O bhikkhus, which the man who has given up the world ought not to follow—the habitual practice, on the one hand, of self-indulgence which is unworthy, vain and fit only for the worldly-minded—and the habitual practice, on the other hand, of self-mortification, which is painful, useless and unprofitable. ”

“ Then, in a decidedly vague manner, as if he had got himself in a tangle from which he did not know how to extricate himself, the author argued that what one person could do to another, he could do also to himself, and that the effect produced upon another person by physical manipulation may be produced upon one's self by a strong concentration of will. ”

“ From time to time we avenge ourselves for all our enforced concealment and compulsory self-restraint. We emerge from our cells with terrible faces, our words and deeds are then explosions, and it is not beyond the verge of possibility that we perish through ourselves. ”

“ Now—so perverse is human nature—I was no sooner self-assured of my moral quittance from the bonds which had held me so long and so wistfully to an imaginary grievance, than my soul rose in mutiny against my own emancipation. ”

“ You see I can put on the pathetic and heroic, after a sort; but I don't take myself along with me—I don't really believe myself. There's the trouble. It's this power of self-mystification that makes what you call earnest men. ”

“ It is only by an assertion of self, of will—a persistent upbuilding and reparation of the shattered fabric of their personal spheres—that the evil can be kept distant and the good be attracted and entertained. ”

“ I had, by self-indulgence; and the following of pleasant paths, and the lure of a young maid, cast myself wholly out of conceit with my own character, and jeopardised the lives of James and Alan? And I was to seek the way out by the same road as I had entered in? No; the hurt that had been caused by self-indulgence must be cured by self-denial; the flesh I had pampered must be crucified. ”

“ No doubt you have read that the result of macerating the body, of depriving oneself of all comfort, and even of nourishing food, is not an increase of intellectual vigour or moral power of any kind. And in one sense this is true. The individual who passes his life in self-mortification is not apt to improve under that regime. ”

“ Self-denial is not cutting off an indulgence here and there, but laying the axe at the root of the tree of self, of which all indulgences are only greater or smaller branches. Self-righteousness and self-trust, self-seeking and self-pleasing, self-will, self-defence, self-glory—these are a few of the myriad branches of that deeply rooted tree. ”